Sebastian Drench shampoo and conditioner

What the bottle says: Drench Shampoo’s rich lather cleanses and provides intensive nourishment to dry or frizzy hair. Adds moisture to hair while keeping body and silky movement. Color Safe.

What I say: Wow, was my hair moisturized. My hair was downright puffy after using Drench, and for my hair, that’s a bad thing. It definitely delivered the moisture, but it seemed like my cuticle didn’t close after I conditioned and my hair just soaked up all the moisture in the air that it could. This shampoo is definitely NOT color safe, either; my red permanent color was stripped almost completely after use.

The stats:

Hair Quality (1: None to 5: A Ton)

Shampoo Quality

Chances of me using again: 20%

Sebastian Light shampoo and conditioner

What the bottle says: Light shampoo’s gentle lather cleanses and purifies providing wightless natural conditioning where you need it the most, leaving a healthy radiant shine. Color safe.

What I say: This shampoo definitely delivers what it promises. My hair was extremely shiny after use, and it did have a noticeable amount of body and volume while staying soft. The softness, however, made my hair a little difficult to style.

The stats:

Thuy Huynh Tresner’s modest storefront popped in to Rancho Cordova last October with little fanfare. During a time when many people were watching their pocketbooks with concern, her small bridal shop in the fledgling town didn’t garner as much attention as it might have in years past. Tresner, however, is hoping that will change soon; her rags-to-riches-to-rags fairytale is depending on it for a happy ending.

Tresner, 39, opened Elegant Designs Bridal on Sunrise Boulevard near White Rock Road as a last-ditch effort to stay afloat in her adopted country. Her now ex-husband brought her to America as his bride just 13 years ago and treated her to a life she could never have imagined in her small Vietnamese hometown.

Tresner’s beginnings in Vietnam were humble at best. As a child she didn’t have any toys to play with, so she would draw her own paper dolls and draw clothing for her hand-made models to wear. Years later while attending Huong Duong, a school in her hometown, she rediscovered the passion she’d once had for making clothes for her paper dolls.

“I was thinking, ‘Wow, I can make clothes for doll, I can make clothes for me!’ That’s how I started,” she said in a still thick Vietnamese accent. 

In 1996 she got an opportunity of a lifetime. Her former husband sponsored her and brought her to the U.S. to be his wife. Seven years later they had a daughter, Angelina, who is now 6 years old.

“It’s a fairy tale, a very beautiful story,” she said, “but it just didn’t work out the way we planned.”

The Tresners lived a lavish lifestyle, far removed from Thuy’s humble roots in Vietnam. Together they owned several houses in the Sacramento area and operated several businesses, including Fitness System, a 24-hour fitness center in Lodi. Last July, however, her husband filed for divorce.

Tresner isn’t entirely sure what happened between them. “I think he is getting older and he wants to experience someone other,” Tresner postulated.

 The divorce has left her with little more than memories of the privileged life she had been brought in to from Vietnam. “We used to live in an 11,000-square-foot home,” she said. “He took over everything and I have absolutely nothing right now.”

Despite her setbacks, something good has come from the divorce. Once her husband filed, she felt prompted to try and live her dream of being a professional designer.

“When we separated I had no money coming in at all,” she said. “I decided I would open a wedding store and designing store because that’s what I’m good at.”

Tresner choosing Rancho Cordova as the location for her new business was no mistake. Her daughter’s school and friends are located in Rancho Murieta and Tresner wanted to be close enough to take her to and from school.

“I want to base it on my daughter’s life,” she said.

Getting her name known as a designer has been difficult. When she first opened, she made business cards with a coupon on the back and passed them out to businesses around her shop. She also placed ads on Craigslist to try and make her business known in Sacramento’s competitive bridal market. One cold Saturday earlier this year, Tresner could be seen in a hand-made white skirt hammering small cardboard signs into the grass in front of her store.

Tresner is hoping her small attempts at advertising will pay off, but she knows that the recession is making it difficult for her to recoup her money.

“Not enough to pay rent yet,” she said about her income. “I have to put up my money to pay the rent and the bills.”

Her mother, whom Tresner sponsored after becoming a U.S. citizen, has been helping her with her dream in any way she could.

“It’s pretty tough but I have to get through it,” she said. “My mom really been by my side the whole time. I’m lucky enough to have friend and family support.”

Tresner charges less than her competitors even though it is difficult for her to make ends meet on her income.

“I love to meet people, and I love to help everybody out right now,” she said. “Especially because of the economy, I try to pass on most of the savings for everyone.”

So far, though, she has found so much satisfaction in her work that it makes the struggle worthwhile.

“I don’t make nothing right now but it makes me feel good. I am doing something good,” she said.

One thing that has surprised Tresner is how happy she is to help the people who come in to the store, especially after they have bad experiences elsewhere. One woman came to her, desperate to find anyone who would be willing to make her a custom dress. She presented to Tresner a picture of a red dress with a sheer, flowery top that Halle Berry had worn on the red carpet.

“She went to five stores and nobody would make it for her because it’s kind of hard,” Tresner said. “She found me and I made it for her, and it only took me like two hours to finish the whole dress.”

The dress Tresner made looks exactly like the picture, down to the texture of the fabric she used.

“I love to see everybody smile when they walk out of the store,” she said. “It makes me feel really good if I can make somebody’s dream happen and come true for them, because then it comes true for me.”

Tresner’s fairytale has gone from poverty to unimaginable wealth and back again. For now, her hopes are riding on her small, unassuming storefront to make her ending one that will be happily ever after. In the meantime, she’d like to give a little advice to anyone who might be going through something similar.

“I want to leave a message for all the women out there: Be strong and don’t give up your hope.”

Shirleena and Frankenberry as newlyweds

Today my hamster Shirleena died. She was a roborovski (robo) hamster, and she was a little over two years old. She died peacefully in her cozy shoe-shaped bed, with her cotton and food lying all around her.

I expected her to die. About two months ago her husband Frankenberry passed away and she never seemed to be the same after that. (A gross aside: she ate his brain after he died.) She seemed to get frail after he passed, as if her reason for living had been taken from her.Yes, they were both old, but it’s sad to see two souls who loved each other so much be separated like that.

Another gross aside: they were brother and sister. I got them from the ASPCA here in Sacramento, and when I got them, they were called Mark and Luke. As in both boys. Lo and behold, a few months after getting them, I found a baby in their cage! Shirleena ended up eating it. The whole ordeal was too sad for me to bear so I had to separate Frankenberry and Shirleena in order to avoid a repeat.

Shirleena couldn’t stand being away from Frankenberry, though. She climbed her cage and squeaked, she chewed the metal bars and knocked her bedding out. It was devastating for her to be separated from her husband. I felt so bad that after a while, I thought maybe I could put them back together, hide their cages in the closet (for privacy) and hope for hammy babies.

So I did just that. She had more babies and they made the cutest squeaks in the world. I changed her water one last time and left her alone to raise her young’uns. She tended to them for about a week, and then one day the squeaking stopped. I’d hoped that they were okay, but I knew deep in my heart they were dead. I looked in the cage and found two babies with their heads torn off.

After that I kept Shirleena and Frankenberry separated for good. They eventually became accustomed to a solitary lifestyle but it just seemed so wrong to me. I kept them apart for well over a year and I felt like a jerk for it. Frankenberry continued to make a mess of his cage ( like a true man) and Shirleena continued to put her food in her wheel and run in it, waking me up every night with the clanging. It was sad, but they managed.

One day, though, I remembered something I had read in a hamster care book when I first got them. It said that robo hamsters typically became infertile around one and a half years old. Great! I thought. Now they can finally be together again!

So once again I put their cages together and they got to know each other again. Frankenberry chased Shirleena around trying to do it with her and they slept all curled up in little hammy balls next to each other. It was as if they had never been apart.

Now they are both dead. I regret keeping them apart for so long when they were so in love. It was my inability to cope with Shirleena eating her babies that kept them apart, and I am sorry for that. I am not sorry, however, that I saved potentially dozens of babies she would have eaten had they stayed together. They are both buried in my back yard under a tree and next to each other, and I hope that somewhere in the universe, they are happily running together in the same wheel, just like they did when they first fell in love.

After the run, CSUS will host a free concert featuring the bands Loquat and The Boticelli’s, as well as acoustic artist Justin Farren.

Some students arrived at school wearing flip-flops and riding bicycles, obviously not aware of today’s forecast. Other students knew the storm was on its way but didn’t want to believe it.

“My phone said it,” CSUS alum Chris Berry said about the weather forecast while holding up his iPhone, “but my phone lies.”

 Berry is originally from the Bay Area and said that the weather is more extreme there than it is in the Sacramento Valley.

 “We have hot days and cold nights,” he said about Bay Area weather, “but here it’s hot all day, hot all night.”

 He continued, “At least it’s consistent.”

 The weather in the past week has made some feel bitter about the new rainfall.

 “I hate it,” CSUS alum Tiffany Mistretta said. “I want a direct quote. This weather is shady.”

Berry and Mistretta were stationed at a booth outside Mendocino Hall trying to recruit communications majors for a public relations conference to be held on April 25. Despite their best efforts, though, most students ignored them and rushed inside to get out of the rain.

The storm that moved in today is expected to remain until Saturday. According to www.weather.com, temperatures will dip to 65 degrees with a low of 44 degrees by Friday.

The good news is that CSUS’ spring break was last week when the weather was much nicer, so the student body won’t have to worry about scheduling their break activities around the rain.

Chris Berry said he doesn’t have anything planned for the rainy week ahead.

“I only had plans last week,” he said.

1. Divas all fight in ring. Santina Marella, Santino’s twin sister, wins Miss Wrestlemania.
2. Hardy boys fight. Lesser-known Hardy wins.
3. Rey Mysterio vs. JBL. JBL quits.
4. Shawn Michaels vs. Undertaker: Good vs. evil or light vs. dark for philosophical people. Dark wins, like always
5. John Cena vs. Edge vs. Big Show. Cena wins as predicted by the dudes in the room.
6. Hall of Fame people.
7. Randy Orton vs. HHH. HHH has a large sledgehammer and recklessly breaks glass! Dudes predict Orton will win. If he doesn’t then I get some Coldstone ice cream (in honor of Stone Cold Steve Austin. See what I did there? Haha.)

ASI held the Town Hall Meeting to discuss proposed fee increases with the student body. The fee hikes, if approved, will add $86.50 to the CSUS Student Activity Fee to total $216 per semester. The proposed amount will be a 66 percent increase from the current amount of $129.50. ASI will decide whether to allow students to vote on the fee proposals, or whether to keep the vote within the Board of Directors and not allow students to decide on them.  ASI Executive Vice President Roberto Torres said during the meeting that the ASI wanted to meet with students before making any decisions.

“That’s why it’s extremely important for students to get involved,” Torres said.

Torres expressed concern during the meeting about the voter turnout for previous student elections, and said that it is his priority to get students more involved with student government.

“It is kind of depressing to see that barely 5 percent of our population goes out to vote,” he said. “That’s why it is extremely important for us to get the word out that we need to participate in voting.”

Student Mary Cruz Troncoso echoed Torres’ sentiments on the need for students to become more involved in student activities.

“How many empty seats are in here?” Troncoso asked the audience. “The point of this is to get people to be interested and to be involved.”

Troncoso, however, believes that part of the blame for the student apathy should be put on ASI for not trying hard enough to get students involved.

“I don’t have the money to make the flyers, but you guys have the resources,” Troncoso said to the Board of Directors. “So many people come to the ASI building on a regular basis, and the flyers for this event were just out a week ago. What could have been done better with that?”

“Personally I will make sure that this board does try to address… all the issues you guys brought up today,” Torres said in response. “But I do want to stress the point that we are only as strong as the students involved.”